‘Absolutely Not,’ Accused Says to Satanic Charges

A 76-year-old Mission Viejo grandmother accused of subjecting her daughters to years of abuse as part of bizarre satanic rituals took the witness stand for the first time Wednesday and flatly denied the allegations of rape, murder and incest.

“Did you sexually abuse your daughters?” defense attorney Tom M. Allen asked the bespectacled, silver-haired widow dressed in a prim, light-blue suit.

“Absolutely not,” she replied in clear and even tones.

“Are you a participant of any cult?” Allen continued.

“No, sir.”

“Do you worship Satan in any fashion?”

“Not at all.”

Her testimony came as a civil lawsuit filed by her two daughters entered its seventh day of trial. The daughters, now 48 and 35, allege that they were physically and sexually abused by members of a satanic cult, forced to participate in ritual murders and to commit bizarre acts of incest with both their parents from the time they were infants until young adulthood. One has said she repressed memories of her childhood until undergoing psychotherapy in mid-1988 for marital problems.

The suit also charges that the 48-year-old woman’s daughter, now 11, was the victim of ritualistic abuse by her grandparents, who allegedly forced her to drink human blood during satanic rites in a secret cave.

Under a special arrangement with the court, the women were permitted to file the suit with only their initials appearing in the public record, in part to protect the identity of the girl. Similarly, the grandmother is being identified in court proceedings by a pseudonym.

On Wednesday, for the first time, the plaintiffs’ attorney presented medical evidence that the girl may have been sexually abused. Dr. Daniel Schiele, a Mission Viejo psychiatrist, testified that medical records showed that the girl had internal scarring that was consistent with the possibility of ritualistic or “structured” abuse.

But Allen, the grandmother’s defense attorney, contended that the scarring did not automatically point to sexual abuse and may have been self-induced.

Throughout the grandmother’s testimony, a picture emerged of an eminently ordinary family of four beset only by typical domestic problems as the daughters grew up in their San Gabriel Valley home. The defendant said that, until the allegations began to surface, she enjoyed a “great” relationship with both daughters even after they had become adults, moved out of the house and married.

Referring to her older daughter, who at one time pursued a doctorate in comparative literature and became an adherent of yoga, the grandmother testified that “we got along very well. We had lots of very interesting discussions. We talked to each other at least once a week and we saw each other frequently.”

She said she often sewed clothes for both her older daughter and her granddaughter, who visited regularly and liked playing “dress-up” with her grandmother.

The grandmother said her relationship with her younger daughter was also very close, maintained through almost daily phone calls.

She testified that both daughters did extremely well academically and socially throughout their school years. The family often did things together, such as go to amusement parks or take vacations in the mountains, she said.

The woman calmly denied ever having abused her daughters or her granddaughter. Their relationship with her husband, who died four years ago, had also been very good, she said.

The family attended a Christian Science church regularly when the girls were young, before the defendant became involved in the Unity Church.

“Do you believe in Jesus Christ and the Bible?” defense attorney Allen asked at one point.

“I do,” his client replied.

Outside the courtroom, Allen told reporters: “I want the jury to understand for all the graphic details they’ve heard, they are a typical American family. She (the defendant) just can’t understand” why her daughters are pressing a lawsuit without “one scintilla of proof.”

R. Richard Farnell, the daughters’ attorney, said Allen’s line of defense was “exactly what we expected, exactly what all the experts expected. Several people have testified that it’s a normal outward family to the whole world but (that) there’s another part that no one knows about.”

Allen said he expects the Superior Court jury to begin deliberations early next week.

In other testimony Wednesday, the younger daughter’s estranged husband conceded that a psychotherapist who helped the two women revive long-repressed memories of the alleged abuse did not suggest those memories to his wife during their therapy sessions.

However, he said, the therapist had also insisted that the estranged husband himself had been abused as a child, which he repeatedly denied.